Premieres Sunday September 28 at 9pm on This interactive document contains printable pages, downloadable photography, a video sample, music samples, and a link to The Blues Web site at www.pbs.org/theblues. Note that you can elcome navigate this document using the table of contents and the navigation buttons on each page. W Click here to continue. This document automatically adjusts to the size of your screen. The view may be adjusted under the View menu. Click below to navigate What is the Blues? Series Release Fact Sheet About the Films Director and Producer Biographies Performances in The Blues Quotes for The Blues Volkswagen “Celebrates the Arts” Release Contents Photography Index Video Sample Music Samples www.pbs.org/theblues Home pbs.org/theblues By Jason Emmons and edited by Robert Santelli, Blues Historian and Director & CEO of Experience Music Project In 1903 W. C. Handy, the African American leader of a dance orchestra, got stuck one night waiting for a train in the hamlet of Tutwiler, Mississippi. With hours to kill and nowhere else to go, Handy fell asleep at the empty depot on a hard wooden bench. When he woke, a ragged black man was sitting next to him, singing about “goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog” and sliding a knife against the strings of a guitar. The musician repeated the line three times and answered it with his guitar. Intrigued, Handy asked what the line meant. It turned out that the tracks of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad, which locals called the Yellow Dog, crossed the tracks of the Southern Railroad in the town of Moorehead, where the musician was headed, and he’d put it into a song. It was, Handy later said, “the weirdest music I had ever heard.” That strange music was the blues, although few people knew it by that name. At the turn of the century, the blues was still slowly emerging from the deep South and its roots in various forms of African American slave songs such as field hollers, work songs, spirituals, and country string ballads. The blues was rural music that captured the suffering and anguish of 300 years of slavery and tenant farming, typically played by roaming solo musicians on an acoustic guitar at weekend parties, picnics and juke joints. Their audience was agricultural laborers who danced to the propulsive rhythms, moans and slide guitar. In 1912 Handy helped raise the public profile of the blues when he became one of the first people to transcribe and publish sheet music for a blues song—“Memphis Blues.” Eight years later, listeners snapped up more than a million copies of “Crazy Blues” by Mamie Smith, the first black female to record a blues vocal. The unexpected success of Smith’s recording alerted record labels to the potential profit of “race records,” and singers such as Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith began to introduce the blues to an even wider audience through their recordings. As the African Americans that created the blues began to move away from the South, they changed the music to reflect their new circumstances. Following both World Wars, thousands of African American farm workers had migrated north to cities like Chicago and Detroit, and many of them began to view traditional blues as an unwanted reminder of their humble days toiling in the fields; they wanted to hear music that reflected their new urban surroundings. In response, transplanted blues artists such as Muddy Waters, who had lived and worked on Stovall plantation, just outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, before riding the rails to Chicago in 1943, swapped acoustic guitars for electric ones and filled out their sound with drums, harmonica and standup bass. This gave rise to electrified blues with a stirring beat that drove What is the Blues? people onto the dance floor and pointed the way to rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll. next page ➸ Home What is the Blues, continued In the 1940s and early 50s, the electrified blues reached its zenith on the radio, but it began to falter as listeners turned to the fresh sounds of rock ‘n’ roll and soul. In the early 1960s, however, it was aspiring white blues musicians in the United Kingdom who helped resuscitate the blues in America and translated it to a largely white audience. Bands such as the Rolling Stones performed covers of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, and in the process they created gritty rock ‘n’ roll that openly displayed its blues influences. They also promoted the work of their idols, who soon toured England to wide acclaim and then brought the blues back to the U.S. While they were happy to be in demand again as performers, many veteran blues musicians were bitterly disappointed that artists such as Led Zeppelin, who had copped much of their sound and guitar licks from African American blues artists, were getting rich while the older musicians struggled to survive. Today, 100 years after W. C. Handy first heard it, the blues has profoundly influenced virtual- ly all genres of music in ways Handy never imagined the ‘weirdest music’ he’d ever heard could have. To many young listeners, traditional blues—if not contemporary blues—may sound as strange as it did to Handy. But if they listen closely, what they’re hearing are the same sounds that influenced nearly all music genres, including hip-hop, rock and soul. They’re the sounds of a rich, powerful history of people who helped build America and created one of the most influential musical forms in popular music. What is the Blues? Home pbs.org/theblues Martin Scorsese’s The Blues Kicks Off PBS Fall 2003 Season with Seven-Night Blues Television Festival Seven Interpretive Films Directed by Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Richard Pearce, Charles Burnett, Marc Levin, Mike Figgis, Clint Eastwood To Premiere Sunday, September 28 at 9pm on PBS Series to Anchor Multi-Media Project, Sponsored by Volkswagen of America, Inc., that Includes Web Site, Radio Series, Educational Initiative, Companion Book, CDs and DVDs, and Nationwide Tour New York, NY—The much anticipated series, The Blues™,will lead PBS’ new fall season beginning on Sunday, September 28th. In what is being billed as a Blues Television Festival, PBS will air the entire series over seven consecutive nights at 9pm, beginning with Martin Scorsese’s film, Feel Like Going Home and concluding with Clint Eastwood’s film, Piano Blues, on Saturday, October 4. Check local listings for broadcast dates and times. Under the guiding hand of Executive Producer Martin Scorsese, and sponsored by Volkswagen of America, Inc., The Blues consists of seven impressionistic and interpretive films that capture the essence of the blues while exploring how this art form so deeply influenced people the world over. In addition to Scorsese and Eastwood, the other directors and films in the series include: Wim Wenders, The Soul of a Man;Richard Pearce, The Road to Memphis; Charles Burnett, Warming by the Devil’s Fire; Marc Levin, Godfathers and Sons; and Mike Figgis, Red, White and Blues. Along with Scorsese, Paul G. Allen and Jody Patton of Vulcan Productions and Ulrich Felsberg of Road Movies are executive producing the series; Alex Gibney is the series producer, Margaret Bodde is the producer and Richard Hutton is the co-producer. “All of these directors share a passion for the blues,” said Martin Scorsese. “The idea of different perspectives from filmmakers who love the music seemed like the right way to approach such personal and evocative music. Out of the seven films, all together, the audience will ideally come away with the essence of the music—the spirit of it rather than just plain facts.” Series Release Alex Gibney, the series producer, said, “Through the artistry and passion of these filmmakers, The Blues hopes to link the present and the past by engaging a new generation of viewers and listeners to seek out the music in clubs, festivals and concerts, even as they look back— through books, CDs and archival images—at the origins of the blues. In this way, The Blues will not be the last word on the subject; it will be the ‘first word’ of a new, more free-wheeling conversation.” next page ➸ Home “Martin Scorsese’s vision for this project is to promote and preserve this music that has meant so much to him and to pay tribute to the musicians themselves,” said producer Margaret Bodde. “It’s about the power and influence of the music. And revealing the music and its origins to kids who may not know much about the blues.” “The Blues is another example of PBS’s distinctive commitment to telling the American story through the backdrop of music,” said PBS President and CEO Pat Mitchell. “We remain dedicated to American culture. And we are honored to host Martin Scorsese and the great directors he’s assembled who have made The Blues an engaging series that will bring music to life on the screen and have value long after broadcast on the Web, in schools and as a historical document.” The Blues series will anchor a year-long celebration of events to help raise awareness of the blues and its contribution to American culture and music worldwide. Its goal is to reach as many people as possible through the following initiatives: the seven-film series on PBS; an extensive Web site at www.pbs.org/theblues; a 13-part radio series on public radio stations nationwide, distributed by Public Radio International and co-produced by Experience Music Project and Ben Manila Productions; a teacher’s guide containing blues lesson plans, teaching strategies and resource materials for high school teachers of English, Social Studies and Music also produced by Experience Music Project; a companion book published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins, entitled Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey; value-added DVDs, a CD boxed set, individual soundtracks for each show, a single “Best of” album and individual artist recordings released collaboratively by Hip-O Records/Universal Music Enterprises and Columbia/Legacy; “On the Road,” a national schedule of film, music and heritage events celebrating the blues throughout the year; a “Salute to the Blues” benefit concert that took place at Radio City Music Hall on February 7, 2003, and a film of the “Salute to the Blues” concert for theatrical release directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) and executive produced by Martin Scorsese.